They did this intentionally, they wanted to see how teams would use tactics, and strategy to win when they needed to, and lose when they needed to. Basically, don't expect bots to just go out there and make negitive points all the time. You would need to be very unsportsmanly to do that, and would pretty much be digging yourself a grave (points-wise).

Place your attention entirely on my voice and try to ignore all the others. It is important to be able to focus on a single source of information while blocking out all the other things competing for your attention.

read the first line, it says I feel that neg points are very unlikely!

unfortunately i cant edit the options.

lemme just give the reasons that I posted this, as I think that it isnt clear

i saw a bunch of ppl complaining, but noone offering a better way.

i thought i with1 box on the floor, you would get neg poins. i was wrong it is actualy 0. I see that as wrong because there is no differace between 1 box and 0 boxes.

about the "I for 1 like negatives": that is my trying to be funny. I posted at like 3:45AM

I really liked the original game!

I do kinda blame us all for the confusion. We kept asking stupid questions about situations that are unlikely / a bad stratigy. What if a bot make a pyramid, what if a bot is holding a stack, etc. Mabey this was just to mess with us. It was posted on a friday so they can spend all weekend laughing at how geeks will ruin a good weekend to surf the forums, debate semantics over something they were gonna change. common guys this is ment to be fun im gonna change my vote, cuz i know first will do the rite thing.

sorry bout the controversy this wasnt what i intended. I just wasnt thinking this morning

they obviously want their to be negative points, it makes other parts of stack counting easier (like pyramid stacks)

my question is WHY WOULD YOU EVEN WANT TO GIVE SOMEONE A NEGATIVE SCORE???? think, your qualifing points, the points that advance you through the competition, the good happy points everyone wants, is your alliance score plus two times the opponent's score.... you get 45 points, and give the other team, lets say -20 points, you get 45 + (-40) to get a QP of 5

thats bad, no one wants 5 QPs, and you could give your self much worse if you give them a lower score... you want their score to be as close to yours as possible without them winning...

to quote dlavery, any team who gives their opponent's a negative score will get attacked with cheese so they never do it again...

there is NOTHING else to be said about this topic, go build a robot or something

Deal with it. Do something useful with your time (like build a robot!) rather than complaining that this isn't "fair". If FIRST wants to change things, they will. If not, then they won't. Either way, we are going to have to deal with whatever they throw at us!

Well said Katie. The amount of energy expended on CD to complain about the rules could be better spent doing productive things. The toughest thing about gracious professionalism is accepting adversity. It is easy to be graciously professional when circumstances are ideal. However, when circumstances are not ideal, that is when gracious professionalism is really tested and it is up to the individual to respect the rules and not complain but rather accept them and be professional about it. FIRST is similar to real life in that nothing is perfect and you have to deal with the circumstances as they arise and make the best of it!

Originally posted by Katie Reynolds Deal with it. Do something useful with your time (like build a robot!) rather than complaining that this isn't "fair". If FIRST wants to change things, they will. If not, then they won't. Either way, we are going to have to deal with whatever they throw at us!

- Katie

You're exactly right Katie.

Gope:
FIRST didn't throw out the tape measure rule. There was no tape measure rule. There was an "entanglement" rule, which was extremely difficult to police/interpret because a normal tape measure (if deployed properly and timely) can run absolutely no risk of entanglement. It's a point of view issue. Just like the issue of bumpers in the 2000 competition. So, in escence, FIRST did not change any rules last year after the first week of Regionals. I personally was under the assumtion that any loose wire was an "entanglement risk," but in hindsight I see that tape measure / mouse 'bot advocates had a decent arguement.

My feelings are similar to David's. Petitions like this won't work during the season, just save it until the Team Forum. If you still don't like the rules, you're s.o.l. for a few months.

Again it comes down to whether you design a robot for the finals or for elimination rounds. Take last year for example, grab all three goals to shut the other guy out you win. A number of bots went for the center goal for various reasons. We at S.P.A.M. elected to get to that goal first before anyone else could, hence the incrediblely fast drivetrain that even the cameras had trouble following at 12 ft per second. This in conjunction with handing the goal off to our alliance mate and then fighting for the other one gave us a high success rate. Sure, we weren't in the top in terms of rank but in the end we were in the finals. So to those pursuing the negative point strategy, it is a valid strategy and you just might win that way. Actually, make it go on a sort of lift/elevator so you can constantly change the multipliers. That way you can just park in the other alliance's scoring zone and adjust the score as necessary or how you feel like it!

oh joy so in the finals I'm going to see crane bot versus crane bot and whoever reaches the highest wins!!!(Me yawns and decides if that is the way they wanna play it paint a big red bulls-eye on the back of your robot cuse your a dead man) DQ=0> -x

Originally posted by MRL180YTL2002 Again it comes down to whether you design a robot for the finals or for elimination rounds. Take last year for example, grab all three goals to shut the other guy out you win. A number of bots went for the center goal for various reasons. We at S.P.A.M. elected to get to that goal first before anyone else could, hence the incrediblely fast drivetrain that even the cameras had trouble following at 12 ft per second. This in conjunction with handing the goal off to our alliance mate and then fighting for the other one gave us a high success rate. Sure, we weren't in the top in terms of rank but in the end we were in the finals. So to those pursuing the negative point strategy, it is a valid strategy and you just might win that way. Actually, make it go on a sort of lift/elevator so you can constantly change the multipliers. That way you can just park in the other alliance's scoring zone and adjust the score as necessary or how you feel like it!

I totally agree, the people out there that say I can't figure out why anyone would want a low score or a negative score must never have played in a match where your opponents think they have to prove something, that they can totally dominate the match even if it means they also get low or no points. It happened to us twice last year where the match-up was bad and our opponents took all the goals and we couldn't get any and the score was 0. Should it happen..... NO will it happen..... probably some teams won't play the same 'game' as others.

SC15 says that the elimination rounds are scored exactly like the qualifying rounds and that points are accumulated throughout the elims. A robot that is designed to deny points to the extent that a negative score is achieved will likely not make it to the finals nor will they be picked by a team that does.

Originally posted by Matt Reiland I totally agree, the people out there that say I can't figure out why anyone would want a low score or a negative score must never have played in a match where your opponents think they have to prove something, that they can totally dominate the match even if it means they also get low or no points. It happened to us twice last year where the match-up was bad and our opponents took all the goals and we couldn't get any and the score was 0. Should it happen..... NO will it happen..... probably some teams won't play the same 'game' as others.

Why thank you for quoting me. Thats a first here. No one knows why you would want a negative score. But here goes why. The primary reason S.P.A.M. got picked to be someones alliance partner was because we demonstrated time and time again that very few teams could consistently deliver results with a combination of high speed and high traction to essentially dominate on the field. The key is consistency. If this/these team(s) can consistently show that you can give your opponents a negative score, I would seriously consider you as an alliance partner in the finals as a potential strategy. This demostration of a team's ability to consistently to perform a task often is a part of the criteria for pucking. While we at S.P.A.M. have never had the chance to pick our alliance partners as we have not ever seeded high enough, but we know why we're picked. And our ability to perform consistently was it.

Originally posted by Mark Pettit SC15 says that the elimination rounds are scored exactly like the qualifying rounds and that points are accumulated throughout the elims. A robot that is designed to deny points to the extent that a negative score is achieved will likely not make it to the finals nor will they be picked by a team that does.

um... elementary math here...(generates random score)

red blue
-1 -15

Red wins as -1 is greater than -15. Your combined score just has to be greater than the other alliances, no one says it has to be positive numbers only (although you would wan it to be).

Why you NEVER want to give your opponents a negative score: it destroys your score as well.

Example: It's the finals, and Alliance 1 is in Red and Alliance 2 is Blue. At the end of the match, Red has 10 points, but also managed to hold a bin up in the Blue scoring zone, giving them a net score of -15. Here's the catch: Blue gets -15 points, but Red gets -20 (10 - 30), meaning that Blue wins even though they actually lost.

There is NO reason to give your opponent a negative score, except possibly as a personal vendetta--it hurts you twice as much as it hurts them.